2021 rolls on, and so do the hobby efforts of our many talented contributors!
Corrode
I’ve been absent from the hobby round-ups for a couple of months now, but I haven’t stopped painting. Let me share with you the deluge of models I’ve finally gotten around to taking photos of:
Two Techmarines here, a Crimson Fists Feirros (gotta catch ’em all!) and the new Primaris Techmarine. It was new when I painted it, anyway.
Some new Crimson Fists, including 3 sets of lightning claw/storm shield Company Veterans, some Vanguard Veterans, and some grav-cannon equipped Devastators.
Some more Blood Angels, including melta Devastators, a Sanguinary Priest with jump pack, and a Judiciar – I swapped the head on this guy to be hooded instead of the default skull thing.
And finally some non-GW bits and pieces – two Brotherhood of Steel guys from Fallout: Wasteland Warfare, and some Carnevale vampires!
Jack
I’ve managed to get a little bit more than usual done in the first half of this month, first wrapping up a couple projects I’d had half-done for ages, then whipping out one of the new Storm Speeders. Super cool kit – I give it an A+ once completed, but it really asks to be painted in a lot of subassemblies. I had major struggles getting my brush into the cockpit, or to cleanly paint Brother Tinnitus.
My early-month projects were both fairly straight forward, if time consuming. I painted up a new Tor Garadon, as I’ve revised my paint scheme since he originally released and I want him to match the army, and I converted the Bladeguard Ancient, who I’ll likely never use, into a sergeant for my Bladeguard Veterans (I did this while waiting for the multipart kit to release, which of course happened as soon as I finished. Tor’s default head and gun aren’t exactly my favorite – the face has a little too much chin and the gun doesn’t seem to have any ability to aim – so I added one of the spare Indomitus Captain helmets and used the aiming gravis arm from a plasma inceptor.
This ended up being a surprisingly straightforward conversion – the axe head is from a sanguinary guard with the blood drops shaved off, and the shield is a spare bladeguard. Just needed to shave down the forearm on the ancient a bit to make it fit.
Wings
Behold the mighty crane!
I have been continuing my ongoing lockdown project of gradually building towards having a really nice table once I can finally play in person again. This time around, I’ve added two squares of Dense/Difficult area terrain, built out of some Sector Mechanicus bits to better go with my urban themed table than more conventional forests would.
I’ve got a third base planned out with the statues I painted last year, and will find some final bits to bodge together for a fourth, and then project: table will be nearing completion.
Rockfish
I have been pretty productive with painting lately for some reason, I have been ripping through my backlog quite effectively. While it was not the first thing I painted, probably the most substantial thing was the Void Dragon!
I was pretty chuffed with how they turned out, although I will say that those zapping strands are a pain in the ass to work on. Getting it out of my backlog has been on my mind for a while as the box turned up a couple of months ago at ths point, for other necrons stuff that have been sitting around for a while, I also filled out my Deathmark squad.
Another army I worked on was my Craftworlds, which are starting to get somewhere! The first unit I did was a Wraithlord which I think turned out really well!
More recently I did some Dire Avengers, which are a absolute pain to build but look pretty decent I would say.
I also did a Farseer Skyrunner!
With these three units I am up to ~1K points, albeit a bit of a mixed bag force.
I also did a unit for my Salamanders, that like the C’Tan has been sitting around since it came out, in this case a Gladiator Valiant!
I managed to do it in half the time of the last marine vehicle without compromising on quality, so I pretty pleased with that!
I also did a quick infinity model amongst the other stuff, this time a Kamau hacker!
I almost forgot that I also started another army! This time Admech, in a particularly fast to paint scheme.
Another quick little thing I did was some barricades I had lying around.
Looking back this is rather a lot for just a couple of weeks…
RichyP
For the first half of February I finished off my Nurgle army (I bought and painted up the Slaves to Darkness Start Collecting box to add some more Mortal Chaos units), started an undead pirate army in the same vein as the old Zombie Pirates of the Vampire Coast and painted a survivor from the World that Was(tm)
First up are 10 more Chaos Warriors (from the SC box). I actually prefer the less dynamic old sculpts, as the newer ones are very differently posed. They’re mixed in above with the older ones to make them blend in a bit more.
Some Knights that I never got around to completely finishing/basing, my arch-nemesis of painting is the horse, and finally for Nurgle for a while, the Lord on Karkadrak:
He was a lot more fun to paint than the Knights were and did actually get finished before I closed the lid on Nurgle.
Next up for the Mortal Realms are some Pirates, these are for a little project on the side that re-imagines factions for Age of Sigmar in a twist where Nagash won during the End Times, and the resultant Realms have an undead twist. My contribution to which is a faction currently known as the “East-Aqshy Terror-Raiding Company”, complete with it’s own Battletome that I’ve been making along side it.
So far I’ve created 2 hero units, a Pirate Captain and Sea Witch (Sorcerer) and a Batteline unit of Skeleton Raiders. Much like my Traitor Guard 40k army this will be something I dip in and out of periodically. Here’s the painted units:
And the RumPowder monkey:
Staying in the Mortal Realms again, the most recent thing I’ve painted in February is Gotrek Gurnisson, next time I may or may not have started/finished some Night Goblins:
PierreTheMime
Took a little hobby break for most of January, returning to complete a Biologus Purtrifier to fill out a full Foetid Virion and complete the the model update for 9th edition:
Ah, time to sit back on my model-laurels and–hey have you heard about Dark Angels?!
I have been longing for a day where Deathwing was a viable option for the table and bought up a good amount of terminators and knights back when they were released, just waiting for the time when they’d receive a good treatment. They’ve been in a bag in the garage for, uh, almost nine years. Now, after oh so long, they shall make a return and present-me is very pleased with past-me’s decision making.
Since they’re able to join the Inner Circle and I already had them on my queue (originally intended for Salamanders), I decided to try out Skeleton Horde on Bladeguard Veterans:
I didn’t have one on hand, but Ezekiel is just a fantastic pick for Deathwing lists so I decided to rescue one from eBay:
Hopefully I’ll be able to continue this momentum and will report with a pile of terminators at the end of the month…
Soggy
So last month I worked my way through most of the marine christmas box, including ten Infiltrators. What I didn’t realise at the time was that Phobos units only use one shoulder pad and used twice as many as I should have. Meaning in the past fortnight I was ten short when I started on the Incursors. Luckily, smol marine pads don’t look too much out of place and do the job. I’m very keen for the weather to heat up so I can prod mates with resin printers to make me some shoulder pad icons 😀
Next up hobby wise I’ve got some forgeworld AT knights to work on, I’m hoping the 3d print lines and supports aren’t as obvious on mine compared to some of the horror stories doing the rounds.
“Primaris” Kevin
In a move that will surprise nobody who is familiar with my workflow process, efforts in the beginning of February have been rather scattershot. I still have the four Murder Hornets that I’m working on for House Van Saar, but efforts have been waylaid by a pair of projects that have really sunk my interest. First, I won a Necromunda gang from Ministomp and got a set of Escher gangers so that my daughter and I could work on a project together. We assemble the models together, she draws how they should look, and I get the challenge of painting per her specifications.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present the “Puppy Gang”.
I still have some work to do on the strap and some cleanup, and once she’s done my daughter and I are going to explore the wonders of drybrushing (and pink and blue alien tufts) when she paints the base. Then we’re off to the next model, and so forth. It’s been an immensely satisfying challenge and a fun way for us to get together.
The other project that’s consumed me is related to the Puppy Gang; I have a lot of Sector Mechanicus bits and I want to put together a board. But not just any board; a fully lit one. Back over Christmas I found a fascinating video from Matt Parker where he used a series of individually addressable LEDs hooked up to a Raspberry Pi to allow some really fascinating effects. Since I have a Raspberry Pi, know just enough Python to be dangerous, and have no sense of shame I immediately thought how cool that would be if it was applied to a Necromunda board. So a few Amazon orders and a bit of coding later I have… successfully made a light blink.
I assure you it’s more impressive than it looks.
I have a plan to make a series of 1’x1′ modules (based on Zone Mortalis floor tiles) which I want to wire up with connectors so that I can customize each section. You can cut the LEDs out of the strip, individually mount them, and wire them using connectors or solder. Once connected you can program each LED to display a specific color (each square is a module with a red, green, and blue LED), and do things like have customized colors, slowly fading or ebbing effects, sudden pulses of blue light to represent electricity, all sorts of crazy things. This is not a small project and it’s going to take awhile, but I’m excited to see what I can do.
Mugginns
I had hoped to have more done this week but with the snowstorm and work stuff the Ungor raiders I am working on aren’t done yet. To be fair there are 40 of them! I did finish up these American Civil War models from Sash and Saber / Perry Miniatures recently. I already have US Marines and sailors painted, as well as US cavalry. Now I have Confederates to match. The infantry are technically Tucker’s Naval Brigade from Sailor’s Creek, right at the end of the war almost at Appomattox. They were brought into the infantry when the war was going so badly that the Confederacy needed more troops.
Recent research articles I’ve found show they were likely wearing a mix of uniform colors in their hats, jackets, and pants. Some would have had gray / brown wooljean and some would have had federal issue blue. I’ve mixed it up quite a bit in these models to show the supply issue especially that late in the war. I’ll use these guys as marines / sailors who have are stationed inland to fight or maybe come off a boat for a quick assault / defense.
